janelee Posted July 17, 2008 Share Posted July 17, 2008 (edited) When taking medicine we usually drink warm water, and then why can not use tea? Is the following answer right? Tea contains tannic acid, it will appear chemical reaction with various ingredients in the medicine, so that it will reduce the effect even failure. For example, when anemia patients take iron dose, it will react of tannic acid and become tannic acid iron that difficulty to be absorbed into the body. Edited July 17, 2008 by Dak removed link Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainPanic Posted July 17, 2008 Share Posted July 17, 2008 Sounds as a plausible explanation. Tea is full of all kinds of organic substances, and tannin could react with other things in a medicine. On the other hand... it might be simply be the pharmaceutical industry who cannot be bothered testing their medicine with every compound in tea to make sure nothing happens... so they advice you to take it with normal water. My guess (note: I'm no doctor!) is that it's perfectly safe to use tea. If not, it would also be unwise to take tea right after swallowing the medicine Let's move this one to organic chemistry, shall we? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Cuthber Posted July 17, 2008 Share Posted July 17, 2008 Tea is generally drunk hot. That might upset some medication, particularly "time release" preparations. Incidentally, re. "When taking medicine we usually drink warm water" I don't know about you, but if I want an aspirin, I'm not going to waste time warming water. It will be near 37 C pretty soon anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frosch45 Posted July 17, 2008 Share Posted July 17, 2008 Not only that, but IIRC tanic acid is a stimulant and as such will mess with certain psychoactive meds. Makes sense too, if you think about it. Say you're taking a basic (alkaline) medicine, it reacts with the tannic acid and is neutralized.... I actually never drink coffee or tea anyway, just to be safe... I don't like the stimulation. Especially if you think about it, tannic acid is used for dying cow hides for lether and such IIRC. So... I'd rather that not happen to my mouth/esophagus... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Cuthber Posted July 20, 2008 Share Posted July 20, 2008 Tannic acid is a weak acid, in the stomach it will be fully protonated and not in any position to react with basic drugd (which will also be protonated). It's not a stimulant to any measurable extent and I doubt that much of it is ever absorbed by the body. One of the components of tannin, specifically from red wine, resveratrol is know to act as an anti oxidant- this may be why drinking red wine in moderation is associated with longer life. Many vegetables and fruits contain significant amounts of tannic acid so it would be tricky to get a balanced diet that avoided them. The stuimulation from tea and coffe comes from methyl xanthines like cafeine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frosch45 Posted July 20, 2008 Share Posted July 20, 2008 Ah, you are correct interesting enough, from wiki.... Tannic acid, along with 3-isotheaflavin-3-gallate (TF2B), a Theaflavin, inhibit SARS-CoV (those are both found in black tea) but I thought that they drink lots of tea in china! oh well once again, it has been proven that I should be asking more questions instead of attempting to provide answers... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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